The Breath From His Broken Body
by AccountClosedDueToHealth
Summary: Today is a very important day. Slight AU/crossover with Doom.


**Title: The Breath From His Broken Body**

**Summary: Today is a very important day. Slight AU/crossover with Doom.**

**Disclaimer: I went ahead and put this under 'crossovers' to be on the safe side. Better to err on the side of caution and all that.**

**Reaper!Bones/JimKirk friendship. Not meant to be interpreted as slash, but if that's what you want to do who am I to stop you.**

**This is a bit of an odd one for me. **

**I say that, but in all honesty I tend toward the melodramatic. This fic, it kind of rambles on, but it seems to flow O.K. I didn't really have any inspiration for this, I just sat down one evening and started to write-longhand-and this is what came out. I had just finished reading a Stephen King so I imagine that might have had something to do with it.**

**The poem was something I wrote years ago, so it's very rough. I stumbled across it again while digging through some papers. I had just finished typing this up and it seemed to fit eerily well, so I figured I'd go ahead and share.**

...

I sleep in darkness,

And it eats me whole.

I wish it well,

And it caresses my Soul.

'There is no running,'

Myself I tell.

I'm burning ever slowly,

In my inner hell.

….

It was eating him. Clawing, burning through is insides. Slowly and painfully digesting his soul from the inside-out. The lies made it worse. The more he smiled, the more he partied, the more he drank. It got harder with every sip. Every step. Every denial. Every morning he wakes still breathing. The acid of his guilt was breaking him down-one breath at a time.

He felt so helpless. He performed every the expected tasks, he studied, he worked in the clinic. He fussed over his grades. He fussed over Jim's health. He made all the right noises at all the right times. He had years of practice, pretending to be normal. The mask was intact. It was perfect. It never slipped-mustn't ever slip-no one ever saw. No one would ever know what he was. No one ever saw his shame. He worked hard to keep it that way. He thought he might really die if Jim ever found out.

Once. He messed up once. He was drunk. Leonard McCoy cracked-his perfect façade broke-and the Reaper shone through. He was lucky, Jim had been drunk too. The kid didn't remember anything and the police had never found the would-be mugger's body. The Reaper had taken care of it. Sometimes Leonard loved the Reaper. Most of the time he hated it-him- that dark part of his soul that called for blood.

The boy wasn't here now. He wasn't sure when the kid would come back. Jim made it so hard to be Leonard. The doctor was a good man. He tried to be honest and do right by people. He worked hard, he saved lives. Leonard tried to protect the kid. The Reaper identified with the blonde. The grief, the heartache. John Grim had once been James Kirk. Angry, bitter, on the run from the past. The Reaper wanted to help the boy. Leonard knew better than to allow it.

Bones. The nickname was morbidly fitting. The kid had no idea.

He felt like a pile of old dry bones sometimes. Just sitting out, collecting dust for the future. He felt so brittle. As if a single hard wind would carry him away to the far corners of the world. He felt so fake sometimes, like a character in a story that never got read. Nothing but a bag of bones. A carefully contrived façade that concealed a hollow man. No true personality. Just a pale mockery of a human being.

Johanna. Oh sweet, beautiful, Johanna. She had reminded him so much of Sam. His sister would have loved his little girl. The guilt was so hot it burned him, he almost expected it to leave a physical mark. He had lost so much. It was only better to have loved an lost than to have never loved at all if you only loved once in a lifetime. He had suffered through several lifetimes of loss. Each time he had told himself he wasn't going to get attached. Each time he failed and yet he still couldn't stop himself. C-24 had taken so much from him. His sister, his wife, his daughter, his humanity. Dearest Sam had saved his body but condemned his soul the moment she lowered the plunger. Maybe he wasn't a monster, but he wasn't human anymore either.

He was so old, so tired. Humans weren't meant to live forever-they weren't built to handle that kind of pain. He didn't know how much longer he could suffer the regrets and the loss before it broke him completely. Was it really even worth it? Meeting new people and making new friends. There was little redemption in love. The more he loved, the tighter he held on, the more it hurt. Jocelyn hated him and he couldn't blame her. He hated himself.

He didn't know how the kid could stand to be around him. He had stopped trying to fake a nice personality a year ago. Now he let all the bitter and all the bile come out as it pleased. He rarely censored himself and knew his language tended to be as foul as his attitude. Somehow the kid had gotten through and despite trying not to Leonard found himself with a friend.

"Bones?"

"Hey kid," He couldn't bring himself to smile. "I didn't expect you back tonight."

Jim sat on the floor next to him, his face quiet. "I know what today is, Bones."

Leonard let out a raspy sigh. The Reaper watched in silence as the tears finally began to fall. The blonde wrapped his arms around him and held on tight.

Today the guilt was always unbearable. The bitter anniversary of an event he had walked away from unscathed.

Today was the day his daughter had died.

….

**:sigh: I love Karl Urban. But why are his characters so easy to torture?**

**Feedback please! Review's keep the creative juices flowing.**


End file.
